Nikandros of Colophon
Greek poet, flourishing in the second century BCE (possibly 185 BCE-135 BCE).
Although Nicander is known to have produced a prolific amount of works, only two have been preserved to modern times - the Theriaka and the Alexipharmaka. Both are didactic poems, dealing with the same subject matter: snakes, spiders, insects, poisons and antidotes to poison. The poems mix "science" (or what passed for it in Nicander's time) with popular folklore and superstition, and had a tremendous influence on toxicology for more than a thousand years. Nicander's poems were still being used in medical schooling in the late middle ages.
Among his lost works (but reverently referred to in other classical sources) are his Heteroioumena ("Metamorphoses" or "Transformations"), used by Ovid as the model for his own Metamorphoses.